Judge `Misunderstood' Parody, Author Asserts

Stunned Creator Of `Wind Done Gone' Derides Book Ban

April 24, 2001|By Patrick T. Reardon, Tribune staff reporter.

In her first public comments since a court order blocked publication of her book "The Wind Done Gone," Nashville author Alice Randall insisted Monday that the work is a parody of Margaret Mitchell's famous 1936 novel "Gone With the Wind" and not, as a federal judge ruled, a sequel.

"I would never write a sequel to `Gone With the Wind.' I'm not a romance novelist. I didn't seek to exploit her characters but explode them," Randall said in a telephone interview from the New York offices of her publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

"The Wind Done Gone," a retelling of Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning story from an African-American perspective, had been scheduled to go on sale in late May, and Randall, a Harvard University graduate and country-and-western songwriter, had been set to begin a promotional tour in early June.

But on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pannell Jr. issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Houghton Mifflin from publishing the book. Company officials said the initial print run already had been completed. The publisher plans a prompt appeal, a spokeswoman said.

Pannell wrote in a 51-page order that Randall had borrowed too many characters and too many scenes from Mitchell's book for her work to be legally protected as a parody. He characterized the book as a sequel that represented "unabated piracy" of the rights of the copyright owner, the Mitchell trust. The beneficiaries of the trust are Mitchell's two nephews, a retired federal economist who lives in Detroit and his brother, a resident of Atlanta.

Although the issues in the case had been argued in court and in the news media for nearly a month, Randall said she was stunned at Pannell's decision. "I didn't believe my intentions could be so completely misunderstood," she said.

The 41-year-old author said the idea for her novel came two or three years ago: "There was a morning I woke up and thought, I want to write a parody of `Gone With the Wind.'"

From her studies at Harvard and her work in Nashville, Randall said she was "fully familiar with the literary genre of parody. It never occurred to me that the rules would be different for me."

In writing her book, Randall used Mitchell's main characters, although, in most cases, she renamed them. Rhett Butler, for example, became R. or Debt Chauffeur, while the Scarlett O'Hara character was called Other. Her central character--never envisioned by Mitchell--is Cynara, Other's half-sister, who was the product of a union between Other's father and Mammy, the black cook.

"In my parody, the black characters are multidimensional, and the white characters are stereotypes--flat would be the word," Randall said.

Pannell, however, saw her depictions of Other and the rest of the white characters as multidimensional and further proof of his contention that Randall's book is a sequel.

He acknowledged parodic elements in "The Wind Done Gone" but ruled that because Randall did more than simply parody the Mitchell book, she went too far. "While `The Wind Done Gone' in part criticizes `Gone With the Wind,' the book's overall purpose is to create a sequel to the older work and provide Ms. Randall's social commentary on the antebellum South," Pannell wrote.

Randall insisted Monday that she had no other agenda.

"`Gone With the Wind' is my subject. I wanted to ridicule `Gone With the Wind.' I wanted to ridicule it forcefully. I intended . . . to ridicule the racism in that book," Randall said. "I intended my book to give solace to African-American men and women, especially women, who have been injured by the stereotypes in [Mitchell's] book."

Randall said the controversy has shown her the need for a book like hers to counter the cultural impact of "Gone With the Wind," and that it has deepened her commitment.

With Pannell's ruling, she faces the prospect that, unless her publisher's appeals succeed, her book may never reach the public. "That is a hard possibility," she said. "I take all of this very seriously."